This is our monthly recap where we look at what reward programs we were able to add miles or points to over the previous period. While we continue to be all about ways to earn really cheap or free airline miles and hotel reward points, we have shifted our “collecting” mindset into spending over the past months. What fun is earning all these rewards if you never spend them. With all the really great credit card rewards being offered for signing up for new cards, airlines have slowly been increasing their redemption rates and/or making it more difficult to spend those rewards. So we are trying to use some of our stash to help plan the next family vacation. To read proof how collecting miles/points can work for your family, read our post on how we are going to Hawaii (and Disneyland) for $30 in total cost for the flights.

We have really dwindled down a lot of our accounts because of the Hawaii trip, but that is what the miles and points are for, right? So far, we have received our mainland flights and all of our hotel nights on Oahu for absolutely “free” using miles and points in various programs.

With our last credit card churn back in October, we are gearing up for our first official multi-card churn this month. United announced the merging of Continental accounts will start in March, so I want to get at least the United Explorer cards before my Continental cards try and convert. We will also probably be trying for several other cards too. Stay tuned later this month.

Below is where we stand at month end.

[easychart type=”line” height=”300″ width=”350″ title=”Mile/Point Status (As of 1/31/12)” groupnames=”Delta,United,Continental,USAirways,American,Hilton,Intercontinental,SPG” valuenames=”Jan2011,Feb2011,Mar2011,Apr2011,May2011,June2011,July2011,Aug2011,Sept2011,Oct2011,Nov2011,Dec2011,Jan2012″ group1values=”69447,69447,70447,70947,70947,70947,71007,71097,71197,71287,71377,71465,71555″ group2values=”100043,100043,108043,108059,108059,109059,109059,109059,110115,58569,58569,58570,117079″ group3values=”67333,67333,67333,67333,67333,67433,68433,68433,68433,0,0,45040,8″ group4values=”8018,8020,11759,13778,13778,13778,13899,13977,14090,28713,41516,46578,46678″ group5values=”0,300,600,600,600,4600,6500,9500,17000,19500,20000,20500,20500″ group6values=”11679,11679,21979,24479,24479,26297,26297,26297,26297,26547,26547,26547,26547″ group7values=”29271,29271,29271,29271,167571,169571,173571,173571,174071,174071,174071,1071,1071″ group8values=”0,0,0,0,0,0,16,34,294,294,360,360,360″]

The following is a brief summary of the things we have done in the past month to build up our accounts.

Delta SkyMiles– Audience Rewards trivia questions in all three of our accounts.

United Mileage Plus- The great Gilt.com promotion credited. The accounts also will seem skewed in relation to the Continental accounts, because we moved all of the miles over into United.

Continental OnePass- Again we cleared all of our miles out by moving them over into United. There is also a very small credit of 6 miles from converting our last Best Buy Reward Zone points from 2011 via points.com.

US Airways Dividend Miles– Audience Rewards accounted for most of the miles posting to each of our accounts. There also was a points.com conversion of Best Buy Reward Zone points that credited in January.

American Airlines AAdvantage– No change.

Hilton HHonors– No change, but this month I expect a bump because of the mobile promotion from January.

Priority Club Rewards- Every month I dread going to the Priority Club or IHG websites because they are horribly slow. Just trying to sign in to our account takes forever. No change.

Starwood Preferred Guest– Our account has not been credited with SPG points via Audience Rewards going all the way back to the end of Nov. 2011. I am trying to track down whether this is a local issue, or a system wide failure.

Note, we also have reward accounts with AirTran, Southwest, Frontier, Choice Hotels, Wyndham Rewards, and various other programs, but since we do not really use them, there is little advantage in including them in this list.

The point of showing these reports each month is to show you that every little bit of miles and point collecting can really add up to big rewards. It is never to late to sign-up and start collecting for your future travel needs. Thanks for reading! Save Money, Travel More.